The objective of this study is to analyze the historical development of the rationalization of the work of hospital nurses from 1880-1965 from the different perspectives of hospital management and of nursing personnel. The first part of the study is an examination of the major trends in the rationalization process; the second presents comparative case studies of this process in six Boston, Massachusetts hospitals and nursing schools. It is hypothesized that the rationalization of hospital nursing was a function of the interdependence of hospital management's and nurses' ideologies and practices. It is further hypothesized that the development of nurses' responses to changes in their work varies according to structural factors: the work ecology, the sources of the hospital's income, and the socioeconomic class mix among nurses. Through historical and statistical analyses of nursing and hospital management journals, texts, convention proceedings, nursing school and hospital reports and records, letters and oral histories, the conflicts and outcomes of the rationalization process will be discerned. Regression and factor analysis will be employed in analyzing nursing and hospital records and census data to determine the important social characteristics of nurses and to compare this with changing sources of hospital income.